A year after her husband Joe Hammond’s death from motor neurone disease, his widow reflects on grief, parenting through loss, and survival

How do you decide upon a day to die? For my husband Joe and me, that meant finding out when the doctors we needed were available, then we took note of our two sons’ school holidays and, finally, we looked at the carer rota for that month. Who could we trust with Joe’s death as much as we had trusted them with his life?

The next step was a meeting with the relevant doctors; what incredible women they had been throughout our whole, surreal journey. They asked us how we imagined the process might unfold, during which Joe would receive a huge amount of morphine to sedate him enough that his ventilator could be removed. We were bemused. What were the options? Apparently, some people choose to watch television and the programme of choice is Countdown. This gave Joe and me the giggles. We said we thought we’d manage without more conundrums than we already had.